Monday, April 25, 2011

For as long as I can remember, I've been crazy about books.

When I learned how to read, I used to stay up for hours after my designated bedtime, huddled under the blanket with a flashlight. Whenever I was going somewhere, I'd take a book with me*.

After my parents got divorced and I'd get shipped off to my dad's for the summer, half of my luggage would be books - it didn't seem weird because my dad's house was always filled with books** &***.

My mom was pretty cheap so a ton of my books came from thrift stores so I didn't always read the "popular" books - when all of my friends were reading Little House on the Prairie books, I was reading anything but - I was reading biographies of random people and old books with delicate, musty pages. My collection wasn't pretty, but it was mine.

Even now, I have 2 big old Ikea bookcases packed full of books - the bookcases were perfect in the mostly unused dining room in Savannah, they were at opposite sides of the living room in Texas and here they've been relegated to different rooms (although I've got a giant pile of waiting-to-be-read on the fireplace) - my ideal house would have 97 kajillion built in shelves, all full of reading material that I'd never have to get rid of.

A couple years ago when e-readers first came out, I scoffed -

"gross, who wants to read something on a weird flat screen? It's not a book, it's not pages, it's not a tattered dust cover that serves as a bookmark. I don't care how sleek and sexy it is, it's not a book."

And then I got an iPod Touch for my birthday and, among the 14 trillion free applications that exist, there are several e-readers. So I downloaded one and it came with some free books... And I read it and it was kind of cool to use a touchscreen to flip pages.

And then I found... other ways to find books online and before I knew it, my sexy little iPod was a bookshelf and I've even found myself looking wistfully at the one bookshelf that's in the living room and wishing that I could just scan those books and make them digital and then read them without even getting up from the couch.

It's like having to buy all your favorite movies on DVD/blu-ray/whatever all over again, but dammit it, it's going to make my carry-on baggage so much lighter - not like I'm going to become one of those creepy people who get on the plane with nothing (sorry, that's just weird)

aaaaanyway, because I don't have nearly enough passwords to remember, I've also got an account on GoodReads - so... go there and friend me or make fun of my reading choices - whatev.


* except for car trips because I get carsick like WHOA, especially if I'm reading.

** still is - if you walk in to his house today, there are books on almost every surface and bookcases in every room. And that's just his books, he converted a whole bedroom into a library for my stepmom's books

*** even now, whenever I travel, I carry at least 3 or 4 books with me.

Labels: kind of a dork